74 CHAPTER 5 DUB wrote signi cantly longer texts, suggesting a greater ease in language production. e DUB group also wrote longer sentences, suggesting a higher overall complexity, and used signi cantly more advanced morphological forms. A previous study by Rousse Malpat and Verspoor (2012) showed that the SB groups outperformed the DUB group in terms of accuracy a er one year, but this di erence disappeared a er two years, most probably because DUB learners need more time to discern the morphological patterns. e classroom study by Piggott et al. (2020) involved 416 Dutch learners of English as a foreign language and investigated the e ectiveness of a two-year program with explicit grammar instruction and a program without explicit grammar instruction. All 416 students used the same coursebooks, but in the implicit condition, the grammar explanations were removed, and the time le was used for more listening and reading tasks from the book. e study showed that the e ectiveness of the program was associated with di erent aspects of language performance: while the explicit group performed better on accuracymeasures in general, the implicitly taught group performed better on complexity and uency measures. Holistic ratings showed no di erence for vocabulary, but the explicit group outperformed the implicit group in relation to the grammar ratings that the experts provided. To summarize, most CLT programs in the Netherlands are still inspired by SB views, and teachers tend to favor explicit instruction on morphosyntax and accuracy, using the L1 as the language of instruction. is reminds us of a Focus on Forms approach. Yet, several longitudinal studies in the Netherlands with free response data have shown that accuracy can also be achieved with implicit, high exposure approaches. THIS STUDY e current study (part of a larger study in which all four language skills are examined) explores the e ect of two teaching programs for French as a FL, the same as those in Rousse-Malpat (2019), but rather than comparing the results a er three years of instruction, the current study focuses on the writing results a er 6 years of instruction. e research question underlying this study is as follows: Is a DUB program (without explicit attention to forms) as e ective as an SB program (with a great deal of explicit attention to forms) in achieving accuracy and in developing the writing skills of Dutch VWO (pre-university education) students in a 6-year teaching program? Our expectation, based on the long-term studies mentioned above, is that with enough exposure to and active use of the FL, a DUB approach might work as well as an SB approach in developing writing skills, not only on overall scores but also on morphological accuracy.
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